1. Technical Field
The inventive concepts described herein relate to a storage device, and more particularly, relate to a nonvolatile memory device and an operating method thereof.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Semiconductor memory devices used storage devices includes volatile memories such as a dynamic RAM (DRAM), a static RAM (SRRAM), and the like and nonvolatile memories such as an electrically erasable and programmable ROM (EEPROM), a ferroelectric RAM (FRAM), a phase-change RAM (PRAM), a magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), a flash memory, and the like. The volatile memories lose their stored contents at power-off, while the nonvolatile memories retain contents stored therein even at power-off.
In recent years, the number and type of consumer electronic devices using nonvolatile memory has increased. For example, an MP3 player, a digital camera, a cellular phone, a camcorder, a flash card, and a solid state disk (SSD) may use a nonvolatile memory as a data storage device. A flash memory is a nonvolatile memory and, may support a function of electrically erasing cell data in a block. This enables the flash memory to be widely used as a storage device in place of a hard disk drive.
As the storage capacity required by the user increases, a technique of using the storage space of a flash memory efficiently is desirable.